5e: Lair of the War-bolds

Three of our players couldn’t make the game Tuesday night, so we rescheduled our weekly game for Monday night instead. Our friend Garrett joined us again, though Darnek’s player couldn’t make it.

The group rushed to the warehouse to see if they could catch the second group, and they arrived in time to find Venger warning that the operation was blown. Hothmar “confirmed” this, and Venger thanked him for the tip and plane-shifted the remaining slavers to safety. Whoops. A bit anticlimactic.

And to wrap up the slavers from the previous week, the group had Beni (the Rogue) interrogate the prisoner. It was a funny scene, largely at the slaver’s expense.

The words “too dumb to torture” come to mind.

They recovered several valuable magic items from the slaving adventurers: a sentinel shield, a broom of flying, eyes of the eagle,

Finally, the group tracked down Pearl with a mind to capture and interrogate her. The plan backfired as Pearl remained confident in her employer.

She was entrenched, and didn’t take the bait.

With their leads exhausted at that point, the group set out for the kobold lair once again (third time’s the charm). They had nine characters with them (including two NPCs), but decided only to take five into battle.

The recently-rescued Bard, Sabine Riley, and Sorcerer, Neelk. The Monk, Phoebe. The Paladin, Larry. And the Rogue, Beni.

The first encounter of the evening was a bulette.

It went about as well as it did the first time around.

A day out from Fallcrest, and with the slavery business behind them, the group camped out and was attacked by a wandering bulette during the first watch.

Larry the Paladin was lost almost immediately. Swallowed whole.

The Bard’s spells kept the Monk and the (freshly rolled) Barbarian from meeting a similar fate. Just an idea of how invaluable disadvantage can be in a fight.

The next day, the group made it to Kobold Hall. They scouted the ruins a bit, but there was little to find among the rocks. Delving beneath the surface, they encountered the first group of kobolds in a skirmish over a sludge pit.

The kobolds hurled themselves into the fight, despite being outmatched in the extreme. A connection to Fury Road’s “warboys” persisted into the next encounter; cries of “Witness me!” “Chrome!” and “I go to Valhalla!”

Thus were born the “war-bolds.”

The “challenge” of the first Kobold Hall encounter was blown away by the Bard’s use of the broom of flying. That’s player ingenuity for you.

The Barbarian decided to delve further on his own in search of “glory,” and rather than abandon him, the rest of the group followed after him at a distance.

A chilly, ice-rimmed passage inadvertently led the group outdoors, into a snow-covered village. They spied a large group of war-bolds in ecstatic worship of their deity. That’s when the white dragon wyrmling flew down and attacked.

The wyrmling got off one breath attack before it succumbed to the Rogue’s sneak attack dice. Cunning Action + Hide makes it easily possible to sneak attack every round. The real challenge proved to be the twenty war-bolds.

With the party initially divided, only the Barbarian and the Monk were in the fight against ten war-bolds. The Monk got beaten badly, and then the Sorcerer aggro’ed the second group of ten war-bolds and it was on.

The Bard zipped around the battlefield on the broom of flying, throwing heals where they were needed, but also drew a lot of attacks herself. The Monk went down, and the Sorcerer went down . . . both of them more than once.

The Barbarian stood fast, and was able to drag the Monk into the relative safety of a tent. The war-bolds funneled in, gathering close enough for the Bard to hit many of them with faerie fire. The Rogue picked off stragglers.

After a grueling fight, the Barbarian and Monk were able to cut down enough of the war-bolds to push them back out of the tent and the party rallied.

When the battle was won, the group retreated from the dungeon. Around them, war-bolds fled following the death of their idol.